[Peace-discuss] Surprise! MSM Spins OPCW Leak As Russian Disinfo - Caitlin Johnstone

Tue Nov 26 00:23:48 UTC 2019

 <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2>
http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/12152988a68a6d4dae7506812444c18f?s=50&d=monster
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<https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/11/25/surprise-msm-spins-opcw-leak-as-rus
sian-disinfo/> Surprise! MSM Spins OPCW Leak As Russian Disinfo

by  <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2> Caitlin Johnstone 

So, you might want to sit down for this, but believe it or not the
mainstream media is behaving in a way that seems somewhat untruthful.

I know! I know. I'm just as astonished as you are.

So you know that Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
scandal we've been
<https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-hugely-important-opcw-scandal-keeps-
unfolding-heres-why-no-one-s-talking-about-it-3632903f22a2> talking a lot
about lately? The one where
<https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/new-opcw-leak-further-vindicates-skeptic
s-of-establishment-syria-narrative-1cf9d035db8b> evidence keeps piling up
that the US, UK and France launched airstrikes against the Syrian government
last year in retaliation for a poison gas attack which never took place, and
then manipulated an ostensibly independent and international chemical
weapons watchdog organization into covering it up?

Well, it turns out that bigtime news media outlets haven't been all that
interested for some strange and mysterious reason. But just today they broke
the silence with a new report that mentioned the scandal, and they've
totally spun it in a way that makes the US and its allies look good! Can you
believe that?

And you'll never guess what excuse they're using to spin it. Never in a
million, billion years.

Put a pillow down on the floor, because your jaw's about to drop like James
Le Mesurier: believe it or not, they're blaming it on Russian
disinformation.

MSM has been steadfastly ignoring the OPCW scandal, but AFP briefly breaks
the silence to inform us that the OPCW leaks are being "highlighted" by
"Moscow", and that unnamed "Western diplomats" say "the Russians and Syrians
are trying to muddy the waters". <https://t.co/CYx6noOqHQ>
https://t.co/CYx6noOqHQ  <https://t.co/VAVFugRoVc>
pic.twitter.com/VAVFugRoVc

— Caitlin Johnstone ?(@caitoz)
<https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1198920933974536193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
November 25, 2019

AFP, which just as an aside is one of only
<https://swprs.org/the-propaganda-multiplier/> three gigantic news agencies
that are responsible for most of the stories you see in the mass media, has
<https://news.yahoo.com/showdown-looms-over-syria-chemical-weapons-probe-033
044356.html> put out an article that has been
<https://www.france24.com/en/20191125-showdown-looms-over-syria-chemical-wea
pons-probe> picked up by
<https://www.breitbart.com/news/showdown-looms-over-syria-chemical-weapons-p
robe/> multiple mainstream media outlets titled "Showdown looms over Syria
chemical weapons probe". The article deliberately frames the issue as one
which has been "highlighted" by "Moscow", and publishes a claim sourced to
unnamed western officials that "the Russians and Syrians are trying to muddy
the waters".

"Moscow has consistently raised doubts over chemical attacks in Syria or
insisted they were staged, and has recently highlighted a leaked report
raising questions about a deadly chlorine attack in the Syrian town of Douma
in April 2018," AFP reports. "Western diplomats however say the Russians and
Syrians are trying to muddy the waters about alleged attacks by President
Bashar al-Assad's forces."

Never mind that the leaks themselves are intrinsically important and
completely authentic, regardless of who's "highlighting" them. Never mind
that the leaks have been "highlighted" by many non-Russian outlets, ranging
from small alternative platforms like my own here in Melbourne all the way
up to as mainstream as
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7718627/Sexed-dossier-furore-alleg
ed-poison-gas-attack-Assad.html> the UK's Daily Mail. All it takes is one
Russian to talk about any issue of any kind and it can magically be spun as
a talking point of Moscow, no matter how many westerners who have nothing to
do with Russia are also talking about it.

The report's author, Danny Kemp, has been spending time narrative managing
about the OPCW scandal on Twitter as well. Kemp argues that WikiLeaks, who
<https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/> published a leaked internal email from
the organisation on Sunday which challenges the establishment Douma
narrative, doesn't have trustworthy publications because WikiLeaks is
associated with (you guessed it) Russia.

AFP’s Hague reporter downplays *leaks* from *whistleblowers* that likely
clear Syria of a chemical attack & undermine rationale for US-UK-France
strikes. Why? Because Russia. This was a goal of Russiagate: to smear any
dissent from “Western” party line, & enlist journos to do so:
<https://t.co/zaUmbGg3ww> https://t.co/zaUmbGg3ww

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate)
<https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1198978425500917762?ref_src=twsrc%5Et
fw> November 25, 2019

"Western source notes Russians are particularly sensitive re Douma because
happened close to where their own troops were operating," Kemp tweeted.
"Also worth noting Mueller highlighted WikiLeaks role in publishing
Russian-hacked DNC documents. Plus Russia was accused of hacking OPCW last
year."

Kemp's baseless Russia smear is invalidated by the fact that multiple other
outlets have also published the email, including the Daily Mail, and by the
fact that  <http://archive.is/Vmd3A#selection-421.169-421.233> Reuters has
independently verified the email's authenticity with a source in the OPCW.

The OPCW's Director General Fernando Arias said during a convention at The
Hague today that he fully supports the conclusions that were published in
the OPCW's final report on the Douma incident this past March, which
asserted, contrary to
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/15/the-opcw-and-douma-chemical-weapons
-watchdog-accused-of-evidence-tampering-by-its-own-inspectors/> everything
the OPCW whistleblowers claim, that there was enough evidence to believe
that a chemical weapon was used.

"On the first of March, 2019, the Fact Finding Mission issued its final
report on the incident of alleged use of toxic chemical weapons in Douma on
the seventh of April, 2018,"  <https://youtu.be/MuU3OfAtnyM?t=3360> Arias
said. "The evaluation and analysis of all the information gathered by the
Fact Finding Mission provide reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic
chemical as a weapon had taken place."

"It is in the nature of any thorough inquiry for individuals in a team to
express subjective views," Arias added. "The overall conclusions of the
inquiry, however, must be based on the preponderance of objective facts."

“While some of these diverging views continue to circulate in certain public
discussion forums, I would like to reiterate that I stand by the
independent, professional conclusions reached by the Fact Finding Mission,”
Arias said.

 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuU3OfAtnyM&w=420&h=237>
http://img.youtube.com/vi/MuU3OfAtnyM/0.jpg

Again, everything Arias said is contradicted by what the whistleblowers from
inside the aforementioned Fact Finding Mission have been saying:

·         The leaked email says chlorinated organic chemicals on the scene
were as low as one or two parts per billion, meaning they were trace
background levels you'd find in any industrialized area, and that the
symptoms of the victims were inconsistent with chlorine gas poisoning.

·         The
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ayBv-nEOMTtIc-QOvejQBdCnZQXTuJ5z/view>
leaked Engineering Assessment signed by ballistics expert Ian Henderson
states that the alleged chlorine cylinders were much more likely to have
been manually placed on the ground than dropped from the air, meaning the
incident would have been staged by the Jaysh al-Islam fighters occupying
Douma and not the Syrian air force.

·         The
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/15/the-opcw-and-douma-chemical-weapons
-watchdog-accused-of-evidence-tampering-by-its-own-inspectors/> information
given to journalist Jonathan Steele by the whistleblower "Alex" lists even
more inconsistencies with the OPCW report, claims that dissent from the
final drafts of the OPCW's Douma reports was a majority opinion within the
team, and says investigators felt pressured both by OPCW management and an
uncomfortable intercession by US government officials to come to a specific
conclusion.

Given all this, there is no reason for anyone to feel at all confident that
"the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon had taken place" in Douma. 

In the hours since Arias finally gave them a denial of the OPCW scandal that
they can use in their reporting, the mass media have suddenly broken their
deafening silence on this important story. Reports have come out on Arias'
defense of the official Douma reports from
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-chemicalweapons/chemical-we
apons-body-defends-syria-attack-conclusions-after-leaks-idUSKBN1XZ1Q1?il=0>
Reuters,
<https://www.cbs17.com/news/chemical-watchdog-chief-expresses-confidence-in-
douma-report/> AP and
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opcw-chemical-weapons-watchdog-douma-chlorine-
gas-wikileaks-russia-syria-claim-bias-today-2019-11-25/> CBS explaining to
readers that the OPCW's head honcho says all the naughty people sharing
unauthorized narratives about Douma are wrong. In a story about Syria and
The Hague, the CBS article mentions the words "Russia" or "Russian" no fewer
than twelve times, spinning the entire affair as nothing more than a
Moscow-orchestrated conspiracy theory.

Here's an excerpt from the CBS article, just to give you a taste of the
conspiratorial-lunatic spin job they're doing on something that amounts
simply to authentic leaked information:

Russia and Syria have alleged that the incident was staged since soon after
it took place. Russia even attempted to bolster its case by bringing
individuals who it identified as Syrians seen in "staged" videos after the
attack to testify to the OPCW at The Hague.

European OPCW members rejected the Russian-Syrian claims outright, and
refused to attend the session at OPCW headquarters.

"This obscene masquerade does not come as a surprise from the Syrian
government, which has massacred and gassed its own people for the last seven
years," France's ambassador to the Netherlands, Philippe Lalliot, said in
response.

New OPCW Leak Further Vindicates Skeptics Of Establishment Syria Narrative

"We were right, they were wrong. Maybe going forward people should listen to
us a bit more and listen to them a bit less."
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/Douma?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> #Douma
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/Syria?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> #Syria
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/OPCW?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> #OPCW
<https://t.co/yovSYeU14t> https://t.co/yovSYeU14t

— Caitlin Johnstone ?(@caitoz)
<https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1198445271346057217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
November 24, 2019

I guess it's nice to have some company on this important story after months
and months of near-total silence, but man the spin's making me dizzy.

Of course it's not the mass media's job to objectively report facts, it's
the mass media's job to manufacture consent for the status quo upon which
the media-owning plutocratic class is built. This status quo naturally
includes the globe-spanning US-centralized empire and the endless war which
glues the whole thing together. The narrative that this oligarchic power
alliance has once again deceived the world about yet another military
intervention in yet another Middle Eastern nation would do serious damage to
people's trust in the imperial propaganda machine, so the story will be
ignored for as long as possible and then attacked with extreme aggression
when that fails.

We're on attacking already. This is good.

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